Why Do People Not Check Clothes For Thousands Of Dollars Before Donating To Goodwill?

I’m willing to bet that most of us check your clothes pockets for money and other objects before tossing things in the wash or handing stuff over to a dry cleaner. And I’m also pretty certain that for most of us, all that pocket-mining has never turned up more than an errant $20 bill or two. But time and again, people keep donating old duds to Goodwill without checking to see if there might be a few thousand dollars hidden inside.

The latest tale of accidental donation comes from southern Illinois, where a Goodwill employee found $2,600 in cash inside of some recently donated clothing.

Rather than pocket the cash or consider it a donation to the organization, the store is going all Rust Cohle on this mystery, sifting through store records and video footage to whittle down the suspects possible donators to a group of three or so folks. The store isn’t even revealing identifying details about the donated clothes just to make sure that no one can falsely claim the money.

This is the third time this store alone has been down this road. In fact, it’s the second time in a row that the accidentally donated cash totaled $2,600, reports KTVI in St. Louis. Before that, there was the case of the $7,500 in an envelope inside a donated shoebox.

And we’ve certainly written about our fair share of big-ticket inadvertent donations to Goodwill:

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Many of these “found money in clothing” issues are from people donating deceased relative’s clothing – usually from older people who did not trust banks.
Ergo, make sure to search grampaw’s suit pockets before donating the clothing after he passes away.

A lot of relatives of the deceased are only concerned about the house and not the contents. It’s all old junk to them and not worth their trouble even to find an estate buyer. If it weren’t for me and neighbors, a lot of my step-mother’s belongings would have gone into a dumpster because the executor just wanted the house. A lot of her belongings did go into the dumpster anyway, probably some of it valuable.